How do you react to the idea of children being wet or messy or muddy? Do worry about the actual state of being messy? The hassle of sorting them out? Cleaning up? What others might think of you? Something else? One of my earliest experiences in youth work was seeing both children’s enjoyment of being…
It’s fairly easy to define play, or is it? “Play: any spontaneous or organized activity that provides enjoyment, entertainment, amusement, or diversion” Oxford Reference, Oxford University Press What about… “Play is often defined as activity done for its own sake, characterized by means rather than ends” Peter Smith & Anthony Pellegrini (2023), Learning Through Play,…
It’s a major move that affects several domains I control. Less obvious is the move of funandgames.org to the same new hosting provider, but it’s a totally different entity, so it made sense for it to retain its own identity. A lot of the decision to move was financial, but there was also an administrative…
It’s easy to make the wrong assumptions about what we see or are told when we don’t know the full story. John Arendt wrote an article in 2017 called “The picture didn’t tell the whole story” for the Summerland Review (https://www.summerlandreview.com/opinion/column-the-picture-didnt-tell-the-whole-story-4138835). The piece centres around the image above showing a group of young people seated…
This is a possible solution if you find Windows File Explorer going slow. It is less well known and does not show up in many of the lists of solutions to try when you experience this behaviour. I always find it annoying when my computer’s behaviour changes drastically enough to affect my work and a…
It was my delight to be the photographer at Sade and Lawrence’s wedding at the Mill House Hotel and be part of their day. From photography planning stages they expressed their desire to theme it to the Harry Potter books and it was obvious that they were going to have fun theming their wedding. I…
Sometimes opportunities just present themselves like when I was taking passport photos of this child. Being asked to keep a straight face and not smile is not always easy or desired (by the child), but offering to do a photo sequence of her pulling different expressions, play around a bit for the camera and of…
Helping make online text material accessible When you create any electronic textual work be it something like Word and/or publishing online (content for websites, or teaching materials on learning platforms like Moodle, Blackboard, etc). Do you use the inbuilt heading level styles to help organise work and show headings or do you format each heading…
ColorVeil (https://www.east-tec.com/colorveil/) is an assistive technology. It is a totally free software programme that allows the user to create the effect of placing a film of any colour or depth of shade over their screen. What’s the point of that? Well, many individuals with dyslexia, Scotopic Sensitivity Syndrome, as well as many who are neurodiverse…
H5P is a rapidly evolving modular suite of tools that can be easily configured to present information, single or short instructional units and even short courses within a single H5P module, including various interactive exercises and media. One big advantage of H5P is that it is easy to learn, can be used by anybody to…
